Shrink Your Cookprint

New Year Resolutions with Green Solutions:
Six Ways to Shrink Your Cookprint

by Kate Heyhoe

 

Chill out. Hard times can lead to stress, but they can also illuminate the best in us, like compassion and empathy. People will understand if you can’t afford that over the top birthday or Christmas present. This year, my resolutions come with a proactive tint of green compassion.

1. Share Your Harvest: Free Up Your Fruits and Fields

Got fruit or nut trees in your yard? Or a bountiful garden or field of crops? When the time is ripe for the pickin’, you probably have way more fruit, veggies or nuts than you can use.

Solutions: Don’t let the harvest rot: find a way to match it with people (or animals) who need it. Invite families or schools to harvest by hand. Let the boy and girl scouts harvest the food and take it to the local food bank (many food banks now accept fresh food). Invite the 4H Club to harvest suitable fruits and other foods for rescued livestock, including horses. In downtimes and when global warming impacts grain prices, many farmers can’t afford feed for their animals. In my local area, after the row crops are harvested mechanically, there’s still lots of food in and on the ground; some farmers open their gates to people in need, to let them harvest by hand what would otherwise be plowed under. With imagination and a few phone calls, you can probably find plenty of ways to put your bountiful excess to use.

2. Opt for Re-Useable Over Recyclable

Ironically, goods manufactured from recycled materials can actually cost a few cents more to make than ones made from virgin raw materials. And with the economic crisis, the demand for all goods is down, including recycled ones. So these days, even if you recycle, your best intentions may be piling up in landfills. We’ve simply got more recycled materials than demand for them.

Solutions: Instead of using plastic wrap, store leftovers in glass containers with lids (Pyrex and other brands make ones, and they glassware can be heated in ovens and microwaves, too.) In the bulk aisle, bring your own bags, jars and bottles. Instead of disposable plates, cups, and forks made from recyclable materials, use the real thing: you can pick up cheap, sturdy plates and other eating-ware at thrift shops. Reuse, reuse, reuse.

3. Cook Fresh, from Scratch: Share Cooking Skills

Fast food, prepared meals and frozen foods save time, but they’re not the greenest choices. Stop adding to packaging waste, and greenhouse gases from frozen foods and their transport, by cooking at home, preferably with fresh, local, and organic ingredients. Knowing how to cook should be a life skill as important as driving or working the Web. (By the time you’re old enough to drive a car, you should at least be able to feed yourself, and not by cruising the drive-thru lane.)

Solutions: If you’re a skilled cook, share your knowledge and teach your kids or cooking novices of any age the basics. Encourage them to adopt fresh food habits, good for their health and the planet’s. If you don’t know how to cook, dive in; you’ve got resources everywhere, from cookbooks to TV and websites. Ask a friend to show you how to make their favorite home cooked dish. The bonus: A tasty meal and a good time.

4. Commit to Cooking with Less Fuel

My book Cooking Green shows hot to conserve fuel in the kitchen, and still cook your favorite meals. It’s a whole new approach to the basics. The biggest step is to scale back oven use. Ovens waste up to 94 percent of the fuel they burn.

Solutions: Instead of oven braising, you can save fuel by cooking in a heavy pot on the stovetop. Or in a Crock-Pot. Or in a pressure cooker. And stretch the fuel by cooking in larger batches, freezing portions, and enjoying them another day.

5. Try a New Fresh, Local Food

Crop failure happens. With climate change comes drought, extreme heat and cold, and crop damage. So familiar fresh food options may be limited. Or not.

Solutions: Get acquainted with what’s plentiful and sustainable. If you’ve never eaten turnips before, and they’re local and plentiful, buy them and test them in a simple recipe. Try unfamiliar fish that’s sustainable, too, and avoid species that aren’t. Open wide to open doors.

6. Drive Less: Stay Committed

Whoopee! Gas has dropped to below $2 per gallon. But don’t turn that ignition over just yet. With gas prices falling, you may be tempted to drive more miles. Don’t do it! The environmental costs of fossil fuels don’t change, even if the price at the pump does.

Solutions: We all found ways to conserve fuel when it was $4 a gallon, now let’s stick to that plan, until better options come along. (Chances are these low prices won’t last long, either.)

Find more ways to shrink your cookprint in Kate Heyhoe’s book:

Cooking Green: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen—the New Green Basics Way (Hundreds of tips and over 50 energy- and time-saving recipes to shrink your “cookprint”)

Green Monthly Planner

“Be the Change”:

A Green Monthly Planner for 2009

by Kate Heyhoe

 

Adopt one new green habit once a month, and keep it going all year long.

“You must be the change you want to see in the world,” said Mahatma Ghandi. Even if the journey starts with baby steps, walk forward. Both Obama and McCain ran on platforms of “change.” If change is what you really want, take ownership: start making changes at home and in your own life.

Sound tough? Rethink your strategy, reduce it to something manageable. “Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win” is an oft-quoted bit of wisdom from author and educator, Jonathan Kozol.

Living green isn’t something occasional. It’s something to do every day. Try adapting month by month, like this:

January: Eat less meat. If you’re not a vegetarian, switch to meatless meals several times a week. If you’re already a vegetarian, invite your carnivorous friends to meat-free meals, and let them help make them.

February: Improve water heater efficiency. Insulate the pipes from heater to tap. Adjust the water heater thermometer to a low or medium setting (the high setting is usually overkill).

March: Plant seeds or trees. Preferably with edible benefits, like produce, nuts and fruits. Tend to them organically.

April: Capture water. Keep a jug by the tap, to water your garden. (Think of all the water you waste just waiting for hot water to reach the tap.)

May: Switch to low-impact brands. These are ones with less packaging or less water. If you drink Gatorade, for instance, buy the powdered version. Bottled versions require more fuel to transport. Ditto for laundry detergent: powder beats liquids in the good green race.

June: Skip the electric rush-hour. Run dishwashers and laundry machines late at night, or at times of off-peak consumption (avoid 5:00 to 8:00 PM.)

July: Dispense with disposables. Pack re-usable plates, cutlery and cups for picnics and barbecues.

August: Run ceiling fans. They use less electricity than air conditioners, and generate fewer greenhouse gases.

September: Hold an appliance swap. Or organize a rummage sale for charity. Let someone else make use of what you no longer want or need. Every appliance you reuse saves another unwanted appliance from entering this world.

October: Clean with vinegar. Instead of dangerous chemicals, use white vinegar. Never use anti-bacterial products, which kill the good bacteria with the bad.

November: Redistribute the freebies. Grocery specials can include 2-for-1 or buy-this/get-this-free deals, especially around the holidays. Even if you don’t want the freebie, accept it and donate it to a food bank.

December: Do good. Buy holiday gifts from charities, or choose a service or donation as your gift to others. One gift idea: Enrollment in a CSA, Community Sponsored Agriculture, program where recipients get a box of fresh, locally grown produce every month or week.

Find more ways to go green gradually in Kate Heyhoe’s book:

Cooking Green: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen—the New Green Basics Way (Hundreds of tips and over 50 energy- and time-saving recipes to shrink your “cookprint”)

Cookprint: A New Green Buzzword

Plus: Refrigeration Storage Tips

 

What do you call the impact you make on the planet when you cook?

It’s your “cookprint”— the entire chain of resources used to prepare meals, and the waste produced in the process.

The cookprint starts with food, in your garden or at the farm; it travels to your kitchen and continues in your fridge, freezer or pantry. The cookprint grows larger every time heat or fuel is added, from a cooktop, oven, or small appliance. Discarded waste, whether it’s organic produce trimmings, plastic packaging, or water down the drain, further colors the cookprint. As do the implements you cook with, the way you store leftovers, and how you dispose of food waste.

In short, the cookprint measures every meal’s entire environmental impact. It’s the total amount of energy (from farm to fuel to fork) used in creating a meal. And it puts the cook squarely in charge of just how big, or how green, that cookprint will be—in ways that go far beyond buying organic or local, or eating meat or not.

 

Why “Cookprint”?

In writing my next book, I couldn’t find the exact term I wanted, so I created “cookprint.”

I was having a tough time with the term “carbon footprint.” Not because of what it stands for, but because it’s such a cold, negative term, and my world revolves around upbeat, positive and inspiring ways to integrate food and cooking into our lives. Food writing should be mouthwatering and inviting, and “carbon footprint” was not.

Nor is the new buzzword “foodprint” exactly right. Coined by Cornell University researchers led by Chris Peters, “foodprint” is defined as the amount of land needed to supply one person’s nutritional needs for a year. It makes conclusions about meat vs. non-meat diets, but pivots mainly on agriculture land resources.

I wanted a word that was vested in personal actions: how we can each make a difference, every day. Even if you don’t cook, someone cooks what you eat, and that contributes to your personal cookprint.

Moreover, I wanted a term that involved a verb, not a foot or a food.

The “cook” in cookprint is a word of action. Just think of all the decisions, and all the physical steps, that go into answering the age-old question, “What’s for dinner?”

Understanding your “cookprint” is about questioning the things we take for granted, and making greener choices with every meal. Sure, a “cookprint” includes ingredients—where they come from, how they’re grown, and how they’re packaged. But there’s more: it’s how you cook your food, the type of energy used, the amount of fuel consumed, the amount of water you use—and the amount of fuel and water you waste.

A cookprint covers even the smallest details. It’s about storing food in ways that use less energy, without sacrificing nutrition or flavor. This means making the refrigerator you already own more energy efficient, storing fresh fruits and vegetables in ways that make them last longer (meaning fewer shopping trips and less spoilage), saving leftovers in glass containers rather than plastic ones or zipper bags. Frying with energy-efficient skillets. And hundreds of other tips.

“Cookprint” is the foundation of this website, and what I consider the New Green Basics of Cooking.

 

Boiling Down Your “Cookprint”

Recipes and traditional cooking methods are also targeted when it comes to greening your cookprint. In places and times when fuel is scarce, people never take fuel consumption for granted. Neither should we. Does that mean giving up slow roasted foods or big, boiling pots of pasta? Absolutely not! But there are plenty of ways to stretch the fuels we use, every time we turn on the oven or fire up the burner, and green our cookprint by doing so. It’s time to stop being mindless energy hogs when it comes to cooking methods. It’s time to green our cookprints.

 

Cookprint Q & A:
Refrigerator Temperature

From time to time, as I write my current book, I’ll be posting tips and articles intended to color your “cookprint.” To start, here’s a question that makes better use of your refrigerator.

Q: The refrigerator is the kitchen’s biggest energy hog. What’s the best temperature setting for your refrigerator?

A: When fresh foods are stored properly, at their specific optimal temperatures, they’ll last longer, meaning fewer gas-guzzling trips to the store. Use a refrigerator/freezer thermometer to monitor your setting. In general, 37 to 40 degrees cools sufficiently without wasting electricity. Keep dairy products at 33 to 38 degrees, meats between 31 and 36 degrees, and eggs at 33 to 37 degrees. Store fresh vegetables and ripe fruits at 35 to 40 degrees. To stash foods in the coldest sections of the fridge, store them along the freezer wall (in a side-by-side) or in the back of the fridge, and never in the door. Some refrigerators come with programmable storage bins, so you simply set them for meats, produce or citrus. Tip: Place a freezer pack in your fridge or its bins, to chill down the immediate area (place it under meats or milk, for instance). The freezer pack will last several days, and you can refreeze it when it thaws.

About Cooking Green

Cooking Green: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen—the New Green Basics Way (Hundreds of tips and over 50 energy- and time-saving recipes to shrink your “cookprint”) is the working title for Kate Heyhoe’s eighth book. Cooking Green will be published by Da Capo Books (Perseus Books Group) in March 2009. [Perseus Book Group was named 2007 Publisher of the Year by Publisher's Weekly.]

To learn more about a key concept in the book, visit Shrinking Your Cookprint.

About Kate Heyhoe

In 1994, Kate Heyhoe launched the Web’s first food and cooking e-zine, GlobalGourmet.com (The Global Gourmet) http://www.globalgourmet.com where she says, “At Global Gourmet, we bring you the world on a plate.” From 1995 to 2000, Kate and her partner Thomas Way produced two food sites for America Online, where Julia Child and Jacques Pepin each made their online debuts. The award-winning Global Gourmet site sports a coveted pair of “sunglasses” in Yahoo’s recipe site category, and for more than a decade has been deeply linked though all search engines, reaching more than 350,000 unique readers per month.

Recently, she uploaded the entire contents of her first book, Cooking with Kids For Dummies, to her site at CookingWithKids.com. The site is getting rave reviews.

Kate’s books have been praised by Mollie Katzen (who also wrote a foreword), Martin Yan, Mary Sue Milliken, Graham Kerr, James McNair, Michael Chiarello, Marcel Desaulniers, and even AOL’s Steve Case, among others. Her books include:

Great Bar Food at Home (John Wiley & Sons, Oct. 2007)
The Stubb’s Bar-B-Q Cookbook (John Wiley & Sons, April 2007)
A World Atlas of Food (McGraw-Hill, 2006)
Macho Nachos (Clarkson-Potter, 2004)
Harvesting the Dream: The Rags-to-Riches Tale of the Sutter Home Winery (Wiley, 2004)
A Chicken in Every Pot: Global Recipes for the World’s Most Popular Bird (Capital, 2003)
Cooking with Kids For Dummies (IDG Books, 1999)

Cooking Green: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen—the New Green Basics Way (Hundreds of tips and over 50 energy- and time-saving recipes to shrink your “cookprint”) is the working title for Kate Heyhoe’s eighth book. Cooking Green will be published by Da Capo Books (Perseus Books Group) in March 2009. [Perseus Book Group was named 2007 Publisher of the Year by Publisher's Weekly.]

Kate has appeared in two national television satellite tours, as well as on CBS’ “The Early Show” (Chef on a Shoestring; Super Bowl 2005 segment), and other stations. Hundreds of articles about Kate and/or Global Gourmet have appeared in media as diverse as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Time, Los Angeles Times, Parade, FoodArts; WOR, Bloomberg, and Sony World Wide radio networks. She has written for Better Homes & Gardens, Saveur, Cooking Pleasures, Chile Pepper, Great Chefs, and other magazines.

Kate is a former Production Manager for Warner Bros. and other Hollywood studios, where she balanced the creative, financial, and administrative demands of entertainment media. She speaks frequently at industry conferences, including those of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP), Women Chefs & Restaurateurs (WCR), and the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade (NASFT).

Cooking Green: the New Green Basics Cookbook

Who would believe you can cook a perfect rare roast beef, with a to-die-for garlicky browned crust – using just 20 minutes of fuel? Unlike old-fashioned methods (which burn up two hours of gas or electricity), this “blue oven” method saves considerable energy, spews out fewer greenhouse gases, and yields results that look and taste utterly delicious. Unbelievable. Or is it?

For some time now, my green radar has been telling me that buying organic isn’t enough. I suspected that, as a cook, I could do more to combat climate change. Lots more. The result: A treasury of practices that yield greener results than simply changing light bulbs, but integrate just as easily into daily life. Some methods are old, some new, some I tweaked, and all I refined with good green benefits in mind. Collectively, they’re a whole new approach to cooking the basics. And, they push the concept of “green cooking” far beyond the scope of just local, organic foods.

How you cook is as important as what you cook. Without abandoning your favorite recipes, you can bake, roast, broil, grill, and fry in vastly greener ways, saving fossil fuels, reducing greenhouse gases, and shrinking your carbon footprint. But “Cooking” has been a seriously under-reported (yet substantial) greenhouse gas creator. In my book, it’s the biggest way for kitchen-conscious consumers to take greener action. Shopping and Cleaning sections tackle the remaining cycle of feeding activities. And these tips don’t just help the planet. Many of my methods save time and money, too, yielding some unexpected side-benefits just for the cook.

So, to get the most bang out of your energy buck, why not start in the kitchen? After all, appliances account for thirty percent of our household energy use, and the biggest guzzlers are in the kitchen. After buying appliances with Energy Star labels, take the next big steps in the ways you use them. How you cook directly relates to more efficient fuel use, and the less fuel used, the fewer greenhouse gases.

Plus, a single family home spews more than twice as many greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere as the standard sedan – mostly from heating and cooling. Cooking can make a noticeable impact on household temperatures and how we adjust our thermostats. Anyone who’s sweltered in a hot kitchen in summer knows the impact cooking has on local warming, not to mention global warming. Likewise, a hot oven in winter can boost the room temperature, giving the household’s central heater a break.

The message: Without changing your politics, or completely disrupting your routine, you can reduce greenhouse gases simply by rethinking what you must do every day: consume food. (Leave the green remodeling and general lifestyle tips to other books.) And with this book’s eye-opening, green-method recipes and its hundreds of idea-inspiring tips, you’ll be eagerly serving up all your favorite dishes in new and greener ways.

As the average reader will discover, the kitchen is ripe with opportunities for going greener. It’s the place where people can make real choices, and take direct control of their impact – without letting the family feel deprived, hungry, or stressed. In fact, everyone will feel better just knowing they’re helping the planet – and they can do it one bite at a time.

Kate Heyhoe’s Cooking Green: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen—the New Green Basics Way (Hundreds of tips and over 50 energy- and time-saving recipes to shrink your “cookprint”) will be published in March 2009 by Da Capo Press, a division of Perseus Book Group

Note: Perseus Book Group was named 2007 Publisher of the Year by *Publisher’s Weekly*.

Got some fresh ideas of greener ways to cook, shop or clean? Post a comment!